Top 10 Nativity paintings
From the dazzling to the disturbing,
Richard Dorment picks art's
most memorable interpretations
of the birth of Christ
The Nativity at Night
by Geertgen tot Sint Jans
Painted in the 1480s, Nativity at Night by the Flemish painter
Geertgen tot Sint Jans illustrates the story of Christ's birth as
described by Saint Bridget of Sweden in her mystical Revelations.
Four sources of light illuminate the scene, two earthly, two supernatural.
On the hill in the far distance the shepherds turn from watching their puny
campfire to kneel before an angel who fills the sky with dazzling light.
St Joseph – ineffectual as always, but trying to be helpful – holds a candle.
This, too, is unnecessary since the radiant body of the baby Jesus
illuminates the faces of His mother and the five solemn little angels who
crowd round His crib. But what makes Geertgen so special is his uncanny
ability to convey a sense of wonder and humility in the mild, round face of
the Virgin Mary bending over the crib. This gift for conveying innocence with
his brush is what makes Geertgen one of the most loveable artists who ever lived.
The Nativity
by Piero della Francesca
The unfinished state and ruined condition of Piero della Francesca's
Nativity of 1475-80 only adds to its unsettling psychological atmosphere.
What the picture lacks are the softening transitions between landscape,
objects and figures that unify and make believable the fictive worlds we
see in other Renaissance pictures. Here, the serenely beautiful Madonna
kneels in prayer before the newborn child, but she doesn't incline forwards
to touch or cradle Him. Five adolescents stand behind the child like figures
in a relief by Piero's contemporary, Luca della Robbia. Though wingless and
with their bare feet planted firmly on the ground, their unearthly beauty and
identical height identify them as angels, sent to earth to serenade the child –
though at least one creature in the picture doesn't appreciate their celestial
harmonies: the braying ass in the background. St Joseph is nowhere to be
seen, but the three figures at the right are probably the three kings. Though
they lack the traditional attributes of crowns, rich robes and gifts, one is
seated on a saddle to suggest that he has been on a long journey and
another gestures towards heaven, as though explaining the significance
of the Star of Bethlehem to his companions.
Mystic Nativity
by Sandro Botticelli
Botticelli's Mystic Nativity abandons the rules of perspective and proportion –
and with them the order, rhythm and harmony we think of as characteristic
of painting in Florence during the Renaissance. Painted just after the execution
of the reforming preacher Gerolamo Savonarola in 1498, this apocalyptic
image is inscribed with a text announcing the defeat of the Antichrist and the
second coming of our Lord. It shows Jesus, Mary and Joseph as a family of
giants surrounded by the Lilliputian figures of the three kings on one side of
the manger and the shepherds on the other. Above, a circle of dancing angels
hangs suspended from the golden dome of heaven, while in the foreground angels
embrace mortal men, God and sinner reconciled. In its wild, expressionistic rendering
of a familiar subject, there is something neurotic and off-balance in the picture,
a fusion of joy, hysteria and anxiety palpable to us even today.
The Adoration of the Shepherds
by Antonio da Correggio
Completed in 1530, The Adoration of the Shepherds is Correggio's most influential
work, known since the 17th century as La Notte ("The Night"). We enter the composition
through three figures at the left who form a receding diagonal to draw the eye towards
the new born infant lying in a manger full of golden hay. The bearded giant and joyful
youth kneeling next to him are the shepherds, while the woman holding a basket full of
ducklings must be a midwife. In the background, St Joseph comically struggles with the
stubborn ass, and we can just make out the traditional ox in the far distance. At the top,
five angels flutter onto the scene like a flock of birds. Once again, divine light emanating
from the Christ Child irradiates the face of the Virgin who bends over her son in a pose of extraordinary gentleness, her serene smile one source of the picture's infectious joy.
The Census at Bethlehem
by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
What other artist catches the frigid beauty of bleak midwinter like Pieter Bruegel the Elder?
In this landscape, it's as though we were standing at a slight elevation looking down over a prosperous Flemish village at the time of year when snow covers the hard ground, the sky
is the colour of iron, ponds and lakes have frozen over, and the branches of the trees
are bare. But far from conveying a sense of desolation, Bruegel shows the village as
a hive of activity, a lively community the cold weather only serves to draw closer together.
On the right, some villagers are shovelling snow or skating, while at the left others cluster
round the entrance to the inn or tavern. The huge barrel that's been wheeled onto
the village green suggests that it's the festive season. Then we notice the figures in the foreground – one mounted on an ass, the other walking ahead – and realise that this is no ordinary winter scene but a depiction of the arrival of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem.
As we know, they will find no room at the inn for the night. By setting the Nativity story in contemporary Flanders, Bruegel gently reminds his viewers to remember the Holy Family.
Be kind to strangers.
The Nativity
by Tintoretto
This sublime Nativity is part of the cycle of religious narrative paintings on the Life of
Christ that Tintoretto executed for the Scuola Grande di S Rocco in Venice between
1578 and 1581. The setting is a wooden barn of such dilapidation that the roof is all
but missing, so that golden light from heaven pours down on a scene that unfolds on
two levels. Upstairs in the hayloft, Mary and Joseph adore the infant Jesus, joined by
two midwives who, traditionally, were the first to behold the newborn Saviour – apart,
of course, from the Virgin herself. Below, shepherds reverently kneel at the right, while
one youth stands with an outstretched arm to offer a gift of food to the Holy Family.
Although light is used symbolically in most pictorial renderings of the Nativity, here it
signifies
God's grace, which falls first on His son, the Virgin and St Joseph but then filters
down to representatives of the humanity below. The prominence Tintoretto gives to
the poor shepherd who shares his food with the Holy Family reflects the charitable
activities of the Scuola. The S Rocco Nativity is among the most original conceptions
of a subject that had been treated in art since the fourth century, its visionary spirituality conveyed through the dynamic composition and the expressive use of light and colour.
The Adoration of the Shepherds
by El Greco
El Greco's The Adoration of the Shepherds in the Prado is an intensely personal picture,
painted towards the end of the artist's life not to please a patron but to hang near his tomb.
In it, he dispenses with classical balance and proportion, rational space and harmonious
colours in order to express his devotion to God. The wonderfully elongated figures of the
Virgin, St Joseph and the three shepherds are tilted forward towards the viewer, their faces
and hands lit not from the side, as in most Old Master paintings, but from below. This
vertical column of flickering light illuminates a harsh palette of orange, lime green, magenta, purple and yellow, a pattern of colour made all the more vivid by the background of deepest
blue. Though El Greco gives his figures exaggerated, theatrical poses, their reverent gestures convey the awe they feel as they realise that the long-awaited Saviour of mankind has at last arrived. El Greco depicts himself as the elderly shepherd kneeling before the Holy Family,
humbly asking for Mary's intercession with God to have mercy on his soul. Though he was the quintessential visionary painter of the Counter Reformation, his use of distortion and his willingness to treat light and space irrationally make him a curiously modern artist, one who
uses paint not to describe form but to express feeling.
The Adoration of the Magi
by Peter Paul Rubens
This wonderfully fluent oil sketch on oak panel by Peter Paul Rubens is one of the treasures
of the Wallace Collection in London. The modello for the great altarpiece Rubens painted for
St Michael's Abby Antwerp around 1624, for me it represents the most complete realisation
of the subject of the Adoration of the Magi in 17th-century art. Despite the crowded, bustling composition, Rubens clearly differentiates each of the Magi in terms of age, personality,
clothing and the gifts they bear. White-bearded Casper, the oldest, kneels before the baby
Jesus to present his gift of gold. Behind him Melchior inclines forward with both hands over
his heart to gaze with rapture on the babe, while, at his feet, a page boy carries his gift of frankincense. Fat, dark-skinned Balthazar wears a turban and a pearl in his ear, holding his
gift of myrrh in one hand. The composition of the completed altarpiece is more monumental
and thought-out than here, but it doesn't have the vivacity and humour of this sketch. What
could be more comical than the two camels at the top, whose curiosity has been roused by the carry-on in the stables?
The Nativity
by Giuseppe Sanmartino
From the end of the 13th century, we hear of life-sized sculptural groups of the Nativity constructed in special rooms for devotional purposes. But it wasn't until the 17th century
that Nativity crèches as we know them today became truly popular in Catholic countries.
It was the Jesuits who introduced the Christmas crib to Europe as a means of enabling the
faithful to visualise events from the life of Christ. Typically, artists place three-dimensional
figures of the Holy Family against illusionistic landscapes, sometimes using hidden sources
of artificial light to make the scenes look even more realistic. In more elaborate examples, the figures may wear rich fabrics and real jewellery, with details rendered in ivory and coral and
eyes made of glass. In this nativity group from the mid-18th century, which is attributed to the Neapolitan Giuseppe Sanmartino, the miniature figures are made of coloured terracotta and arranged in a wooden, glass-fronted box.
The Nativity
by Edward Kienholz
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the subject of the Nativity was relegated to the realms of Bible illustration and Christmas cards. One exception was the American sculptor Edward Kienholz
who made this version of the Nativity between 1961 and 1966 in the form of a painted three-dimensional tableau influenced by the Surrealist practice of assemblage in the 1930s. More
than 8ft high and 15ft long, it is made of wood, metal, galvanised sheet metal and found objects including automobile hood ornaments, the caps of petrol tanks, plastic doll parts, a stuffed toy animal, and bits of glass, jewellery, bones, fabric, and animal fur. Against a triangular wooden backboard surmounted by the Star of Bethlehem, the Christ Child (a blinking traffic warning light with the legs of a doll) lies in an austere wooden trough. He is flanked on one side by the
kneeling Virgin (in her headscarf and with feet made of animal or bird bones) and on the other by a headless stuffed toy poodle. The tall spindly object with a wing and a halo at the left must be an angel, while the three figures just below the star at the centre are the wise men. By the time Kienholz created his Nativity, the age of belief had long been over. It's the artist's wit we admire and not, as in the past, his ability to communicate faith by visual means. And yet one dimension of the sculpture that may not be discernible to the casual viewer does appear to reflect the Christmas message. Kienholz was famous for the ferocity of his imagery. Among the subjects of his life-sized tableaux are a brothel, a mental hospital and figures of the old, the dead and the dying. Here he is sweeter and gentler than anywhere else in his work.
he Coptic Christmas follows the old calendar, and takes place on the 6th January. The Coptic Church is Catholic. It was founded by St Mark who spent much time in Egypt, and it is said that he wrote his Gospel there.
